Io Credo in Dio

From the moment that Maria’s father was arrested, stuff changed. No more big breakfasts on Sundays, no more reading books aloud, no more lullabies. As a result, Maria stopped singing, stopped reading, stopped looking forward to Sundays. Then she got older, and the effects of his absence got weirder, harder to trace. Like when Maria was fifteen, and she had sex with that guy who sold alcohol to minors, because he felt safe somehow. Or when she was seventeen, and she came home to her mother sobbing, and instead of offering comfort Maria turned around and ran away from home with no plan, just her iPod, listening to Rihanna’s Pon De Replay on repeat. Or when she was nineteen and she finally pushed away the very last friend she’d managed to keep around. Or like now — right now, how Maria has no job, lives with her mother, and doesn’t believe in God.

God isn’t all-important anymore — it’s 2006, no one really believes in Him — but whether it be Jesus or Mother Nature or Rihanna or whatever, everyone believes in something. Everyone except Maria. That’s why she’s in that bathtub, with those razor blades hovering delicately above her main arteries, seconds away from shutting everyone out for the last time.

But God exists for her, too. Which she will find out out soon, if she chooses to. Later this afternoon, in fact. If she drops the razor blades, and rubs those broken lines of mascara away, her mother will put on the radio later this afternoon, and out of it will play a familiar lullaby:

Mia bambina, lei dorma

Con la dolcezza enorma

And as the melody swells, filling the kitchen, she will smell her father again, all rust and corn. When the guitar comes in, at the second verse, she will remember his tears on the day he was taken, how he made her promise to take care of her mother. For him.

E tutto andrà bene

Quando lei mi vede

Maria will realize that this is no mere coincidence, this song on this station at this moment. She still might not believe in Him, but when the guitar and the melody sway together, interweaving, she will finally notice Her — her mother — and think of all her sacrifices, all the times she must have felt as helpless against the world as Maria herself. And the lyrics will come back to Maria, just in time for the singer to croon his final, saccharine couplet –

Io credo in Dio

Perché sono la suo

She just has to wait for afternoon to come. There is so much she can believe in, if only she gives herself the chance.